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I was a child of the Cold War. I grew up being taught to fear the commies. They wanted to take away all my rights, make us slaves, send us to camps, nuke the planet. You know, standard scare-the-crap-out-of-a-7-year-old-with-existential-dread.

Of course, as the Cold War thawed and eventually ended because Rocky beat Ivan Drago and gave a speech, commies werent so scary anymore. Sure, their ideology was still bad, their economic philosophy was stupid, and they would never rule the world, but they werent scary.

I still dont find them frightening anymore. I mean, basically whats left of the commies is China, which is just a bunch of capitalist oligarchs; Cuba, which has become a hipster tourist destination; and North Korea, which is only kinda communist and mostly just good for the occasional nuclear annihilation nostalgia. In America, communism is pretty much the domain of millennials wholl lose interest after their first good job and the hard-core types who spend most of their time holding meetings about planning meetings to hold a rally if they can get off work. For the most part, communism is dead. Oh, I forgot Vietnam is still communist, but were friends with them, so it doesnt count.

But sometimes, sometimes I remember why communism existed in the first place. Earlier this week, Louise Linton, the wife of Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, gave a good example for why Russia isnt a monarchy anymore. She posted on her Instagram a picture of herself striding off a government jet with her husband after visiting the Scrooge McDuck vault of gold at Fort Knox, and tagged all of her expensive clothes.

Look, I get that shes rich, I mean her parents own a freaking castle in Scotland and shes married to a former Goldman Sachs guy; shes not hurting. You shouldnt begrudge peoples wealth; its one of the Ten Commandments for a reason. People just get lucky by birth or work or simply picking the right numbers and end up stinking rich, but it doesnt make them a bad person. Look at the group The Giving Pledge 158 billionaires who collectively donated $365 billion to charities. Nicki Minaj, whos worth about $70 million, just randomly decided to start paying off peoples student loans one day on Twitter. Makes me regret not following her. Theres nothing wrong with making money. There is a problem with it turning you into a jackass.

Of course, when Linton posted the photo along with the list of her designer clothes, people began to call her out. When the Secret Service is out of money because it has to guard Trumps daughter during a spending spree and pay Trump to use the golf carts at the golf courses he lives at, it's really beyond the pale that Linton steps off a government jet tagging Valentino shoes, Mouret pants, and a freaking scarf that costs at least $200 (seriously, I Googled all the things she tagged). Her entire outfit, including the purse, is two-thirds of what I make in a year. The shoes alone are just about my take-home pay in a month. But $200 or more scarf?! Its a square of fabric. Ive been to the fabric store; I can get two yards of silk for like 20 bucks. Oh, but its designer! So fucking what? I get spending a few million on a Picasso, but two bills for a fancy napkin you wrap around your throat?

When people called Linton out, she went on a big tirade about how much money they pay in taxes, talking about how much they have sacrificed for the country, and told a commenter her "life looks cute." Look, lady, unless you got no legs and PTSD from an IED in Anbar Province, you dont get to compare paying taxes to sacrificing your body for the country. Hell, Peace Corps members sacrifice more, social workers who are on welfare sacrifice more, freaking fire jumpers out in Yellowstone sacrifice more than you having to pony up some cash.

Then she had the audacity to say her critics were out of touch. Seriously. I know people who prostitute to pay back student loans. Hell, I know some who do it just to pay the rent. So when you live with a guy whose goal is to cut taxes on the 1 percent and corporations for a president who is billing the U.S. government to babysit him while he shitposts on Twitter from the 11th hole, bragging about your stupid sunglasses kind of pisses us off when a lot of us have seriously thought, You know, I could probably rob this place and not get caught, when standing in line at the 7-Eleven using change to put gas in the car.

I have a pithy saying, The best argument for communism is capitalism and vice versa. Im cool with European-style socialism; corporations make the goods and give you jobs while the government taxes them and pays for your school and health care, and will feed you and put a roof over your head if necessary.

Capitalism is cool because if youre clever enough and lucky enough, you can be fugly as sin and still get laid regularly. Communism sucks, though, because its an authoritarian regime that crushes dissent, cant run a national economy, and makes shitty cars. Capitalism can be hell too. Just go back and read about the Gilded Age. You think its bad now, but corporations basically hired out the National Guard to shoot union workers, for Gods sake, back then. Upton Sinclairs The Jungle, a novel about the horrific conditions in the meatpacking industry at the turn of the century, wasnt that embellished. I mean, unregulated capitalism and its associated robber barons and plutocrats corrupting the government nearly tore the country apart at the turn of the last century. Anarchists were setting off bombs on Wall Street for a reason back then.

At a time when our countrys government is becoming more and more beholden to special interests and lobbyists; when corporations are putting quarterly profits above the environment, and executives get multimillion-dollar severance packages for driving a company into the dirt while their workers cant afford to go to the doctor; when people have to take on a lifetime of crippling debt just to get an education so they can rise above poverty wages I mean, cmon. Do these folks just not get it? People dont believe in the American Dream anymore; they dont buy the temporarily embarrassed millionaires shtick anymore. Theyre anxious, theyre desperate, theyre hopeless, and theyre getting angry.

For a D-list actress married to a Wall Street banker whos working for a guy who is basically a grifter and store-brand mobster to tell average Americans to get over her flaunting her wealth so flippantly while using government resources paid with their tax dollars? Well, all I can say to that is, Workers of the World Unite

AMANDA KERRI is a writer and comedian based in Oklahoma City. Follow her on Twitter @Amanda_Kerri.

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Louise Linton Is a Walking Ad for Communism - Advocate.com

Posters of Lenin and Stalin in Red Square, 1947 / Getty Images

BY: Alex Griswold August 24, 2017 12:24 pm

The New York Timeshaspublished several op-eds in 2017as part of its "Red Century" series commemorating the 100-year anniversary of the Russian Revolution.

Many of the pieces have notedatrocities the Soviets carried out. A number of the editorials, however, have also offered defenses for or praise of aspects of communism. Among them:

Women had better sex under communism

"Why Women Had Better Sex Under Socialism,"arguedKristen R. Ghodsee, a professor of Russian and East European studies at the University of Pennsylvania.

"Some might remember that Eastern bloc women enjoyed many rights and privileges unknown in liberal democracies at the time," she wrote. "But there's one advantage that has received little attention: Women under communism enjoyed more sexual pleasure."

Stalinism inspired Americans

"When Communism Inspired Americans," from left-wing Times journalist Vivian Gornick, is a retelling of her childhood spent in a radical Bronx family during the age of Josef Stalin.

"It is perhaps hard to understand now, but at that time, in this place, the Marxist vision of world solidarity as translated by the Communist Party induced in the most ordinary of men and women a sense of one's own humanity that ran deep, made life feel large; large and clarified," she wrote.

"Americawasfortunate to have had the communists here,'"Gornick quoted her mother as saying. "They, more than most, prodded the country into becoming the democracy it always said it was.'"

The Bolsheviks were romantics deep down

University of California, Berkeley historian Yuri Slezkine penned a story on "The Love Lives of Bolsheviks," an account of how a belief in communism spurred Bolshevik leaders towardpassionate love affairs.

The romanticism Slezkine described dimmed a bit when he revealed one of the star-crossed lovers "unleashed the Red Terror [and] ordered the execution of the czar and his family," and anotherbecame "a leading advocate of forced labor in the countryside."

Lenin was aconservationist

Yale senior lecturerFred Strebeigh authored "Lenin's Eco-Warriors," a piece highlighting how Vladimir Lenin, "a longtime enthusiast for hiking and camping," passed reforms to protectRussia's environment.

"For now, at least, Lenin's legacy is preserved and Russia remains the world leader, ahead of Brazil and Australia, in protecting the most land at the highest level," Strebeigh wrote.

The Soviets supported the Harlem Renaissance

"When the Harlem Renaissance Went to Communist Moscow," wrote the University of Pennsylvania's Jennifer Williams. Williams chronicled how black artists in the 1930's thought there was greater opportunity in Moscow, arguingat the time, "the American Negro stands very little chance of achieving true representation" in Hollywood.

"In the Soviet Union, racial equality was not merely incidental but a state project," Williams wrote, detailing how the Soviets recruited Harlem artists for a propaganda film about race relations in America.

Unfortunately for the artists, the USSR's support for the film project was yanked once it achieved its true objective: diplomatic recognitionfrom the U.S. government.

Without the Soviets, we would not have "Star Trek"

Counterculture writer A. M. Gittlitz argued in "Make It So': Star Trek' and Its Debt to Revolutionary Socialism," that the sci-fi series "Star Trek" owed its genesis to Russian Revolution principles.

Gittlitz cited the novel Red Star, a book about autopian colony on Marsthatadheres to communism. That book helped spark Russian "Cosmism," a belief that the future of communism rested in technology and mastering space.

Gittlitz argued "Star Trek" was particularly inspired by Argentine Trotskyist leader J. Posadas. As aleader of Argentina's socialist movement, Posadas argued alien visitors would be socialists and would help "free Earth from the grip of Yankee imperialism and the bureaucratic workers' states."

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The 6 Worst Defenses of Communism Published By the NY Times This Year - Washington Free Beacon

MP Oudekki Loone (Center).

"Honored Minister Stavros Kontonis, I want to express my sincere gratitude and respect for your and the Greek government's decision not to participate in the conference whose topic was 'The legacy of the crimes of communist regimes in 21st century Europe,'" wrote Loone in a letter published on stavroslygeros.gr (link in Greek). "Your explanation of the reasoning behind your decision was perfect! Unfortunately such efforts to indirectly justify the Nazi regime and Nazi ideology are staunchly present in Estonian politics today."

According to Loone, her own decision to celebrate the Soviet victory in World War II on May 9 earned the ire of many Estonian journalists and politicians, but it also earned support. "Thus let me confirm to you that Estonia is not a Nazi state and that here, just like elsewhere, Nazis and supporters of Nazism are in the minority," she wrote.

Loone claimed that the Greek minister's decision was a reminder of European values and gave strength to everyone concerned about the rise of a Cold War-era climate today.

"This conference is a disgrace, but I am certain that a future exists in which such events will not be organized anymore," the Estonian MP concluded. "You only helped to bring on such a future more quickly."

Victims of communism and Nazim were commemorated in Tallinn on Wednesday, the anniversary of the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact which was proclaimed in the European Parliament in April 2009 as the European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazism.

Since 2009, EU justice ministers and representatives of organizations that study the crimes of totalitarian regimes have met on Aug. 23 every year; this year, they met in Tallinn for the second time.

Greek Minister of Justice Stavro Kontonis refused to participate in the conference, as he claimed that Nazism and communism could not be compared to one another.

Estonian Minister of Justice Urmas Reinsalu (IRL) has promised to respond in writing to his Greek colleague.

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Estonian MP thanks Greek minister who defended communism - ERR News

Memorial ceremony on Black Ribbon Day at the War of Independence Victory Column in Tallinn.

Minister of Justice Urmas Reinsalu (IRL) said that the condemnation of all crimes against humanity, and human rights violations committed by all totalitarian and authoritarian regimes was the basis of commemoration, and added that Europe should remember the victims of all these regimes.

Today, on the Europe-wide Day of Remembrance for the Victims of all Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes, we commemorate the victims of political terror in a dignified and unbiased manner. We commemorate the victims of communist terror, who in most cases only for their class status were murdered, sent to the communist Gulag, or were stripped of their human rights from the beginning of communist power in Russia to the final days of the communist regimes in Europe. We commemorate the millions of people who in multiple countries were murdered or sent to concentration camps by national socialists and their minions. We especially commemorate the victims of the Holocaust, who were murdered solely for being Jewish. Totalitarian and authoritarian regimes have not disappeared from the world, and we must also remember and commemorate the victims of those regimes, Reinsalu said.

Representatives of the delegations of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Croatia, Slovakia, Hungary, and Czechia issued a joint statement at the ministerial meeting, saying that under the communist dictatorships in Europe, hundreds of thousands of innocent people were executed, killed, imprisoned, tortured, forced to perform slave labor, or deported.

No process of finding out the truth and establishing justice comparable to what had taken place in Germany after the Second World War against the perpetrators of Nazi crimes had ever been undertaken in the more than 25 years that passed since the fall of the communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe, the delegations said. The memory of the victims of the communist regimes demanded the investigation and prosecution of the perpetrators of those crimes as well.

The delegations also participated in a commemorative ceremony at the War of Independence Victory Column in Tallinn. A memorial conference titled The legacy of the crimes of communist regimes in 21st-century Europe was held at the Tallinn Creative Hub on Wednesday. Former dissident and Estonian MEP Tunne Kelam (IRL/EPP), who delivered the opening speech, said that We must take down the mental Berlin Wall that at times divides our thinking and understanding also today, 28 years after the fall of the physical Berlin Wall referring to the attitude towards the crimes of totalitarian regimes in Europe.

On Apr. 2, 2009, the European Parliament adopted a resolution on European conscience and totalitarianism calling for the proclamation of Aug. 23, the anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, as a Europe-wide Day of Remembrance for the victims of all totalitarian and authoritarian regimes, to be commemorated with dignity and impartiality.

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Eight EU members make joint statement concerning victims of communism - ERR News

Prague, August 21, 1968

In 1964-through-1968 the Prague Spring took place when democracy started to bloom in the country under imposed Communism. It was a period of political liberalization, in then Czechoslovakia, from the Soviet Union domination. On January 5, 1968, the reformist Alexander Dubek was elected First Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KS), and he continued in that post until August 21, 1968 when the Soviet Union and other members of the Warsaw Pact invaded the country to halt the reforms.

During my visit to Prague

I happened to be in Prague on August 21, 2017. My hotel location was not too far from the Wenceslas Square-in Czech Vclavsk nmst, where Vclav Havel, the 1st President of the Czech Republic, called for the Prague Spring. That morning I took a long walk and when I arrived at the Vclavsk nmst square I saw media commotion that arose my curiosity and here is the result of that curiosity.

The former Member of Parliament, Michael Kocb

At the square I was introduced to Michael Kocb, a Czech composer, singer and political activist and a friend of world renowned musician, Frank Zappa.

According to Mr. Kocb, the freedom of the Czech Republic is in a limbo; it is by far not the democracy the people deserve.

Mr. Kocb repeats the much known to Czechs history. On August 21st, 1968, 500,000 Soviet and Polish soldiers, accompanied by 6,300 tanks and 830 military planes, a military force three times the size of then the Czechoslovakian army, invaded the country to suppress the Czech Spring. The result, 137 Czechs and Slovaks lost their life and 500,000 Czechs became refugees. Bitterly he tells me that only, then Yugoslavia, now Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Herzegovina, Montenegro, Kosovo, Macedonia, supported the Czechs dissention, which the Soviet Union opposed, and thus the invasion.

As expected from its deplorable inactions or actions, with the Veto allowance to Russia, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) did not help the freedom fighters and in this case the United States support was missing but joined in support of free Czechs later on.

On October 26th, 1968, the Czech Parliament signed an agreement with the Soviets in which 75,000 Soviet soldiers and their families will be stationed in Czechoslovakia. This contract ceased to exist on March 26th, 1990.

In the early 1990s, Mr. Kocb, then a Member of Parliament and acting Deputy Chair of the Freedom Committee, led a parliament commission which negotiated the repatriation of Soviet soldiers from Czechoslovakia and breaking the contract with the Soviets. Mr. Kocb claims that he also found a Soviet nuclear facility on Czech land, which the Soviets denied existed. On June 30th, 1991, the Czechs kicked the Russians out of their land and though was negotiated and agreed, Russia never compensated the Czechs for its oppression and atrocities but the Czech nation comforts itself with being a free nation.

Mr. Kocb was a friend of late Vclav Havel, the legendary symbol of the Czech Republics liberty. Mr. Havel was the new republic president and Mr. Kocb was his personal advisor for over a decade. Mr. Kocb is also a friend of current president Mr. Milo Zeman and supported him. He seemed to be one of us but he has changed, Mr. Kocb expressed his disappointment in his friend and the reason for the movement to keep the Czech Republic clean of communism.

The Democracy is in question

The current Czech Republic president is Milo Zeman and his proclivity to China and Mr. Putin of Russia is a worrisome to every freedom loving Czech.

One who worries a great deal about the encroaching communism in the Czech Republic is Mr. Peter Marek, the head of a growing civil movement to find justice for those who communism hurt. Mr. Marek is dissatisfied of the current winds blowing from the current presidents palace. After Communism collapsed and we became a democracy so little was done, if at all, to punish the communists and their communism system, which hurt so many, Mr. Marek claims. He wants to find justice for those who were persecuted and murdered during the Communist era. Society is developing with a broken spine, Mr. Marek shared his worrisome. In his opinion, tolerance to Communism and its philosophy is deeply imbedded in the Czech Republic education system and that has to change, must come to an end.

The movement Mr. Marek heads goal is to change the public view through education. First the Czech public and then expand its actions beyond the Czech Republic borders.

In the West Communism is not detested as much as Nazism and it is very well alive, Mr. Marek points to a view that should worry every freedom loving individual in the liberated from the Communism yoke Czech Republic.

Knowing what is taking place in so many USA universities, I left Pragues new town Vclavsk-Wenceslas Square ready to join this initiative. I hope this article will light some fire under people who seek real freedom.

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Prague to the World: Without Communism - NewsBlaze (registration) (blog)